


Play With Fire

by Lil_Lola_Blue



Series: Fire: Harry Potter and the Grand and Exalted Order of the Satyr [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-06-03 09:18:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6605296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lil_Lola_Blue/pseuds/Lil_Lola_Blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time to think differently of Snape and Hermione. What if they were like Charlie Manson and Squeaky Fromme, his Witch-In-Chief, and the war was a very good excuse for two outcasts to bring Helter Skelter down on the heads of a society that heaped scorn upon their brilliance? What if he became another Robespierre and Hermione his instrument, to bring a Reign of Terror down on the Death Eaters? What if there is nothing better than to have your enemies driven before you in chains, and to hear the lamentations of their women? What if theirs was a love born of a dark and magnificent obsession, between two practitioners of that Old Time Religion, the kind of magick that could strike fear into the dark heart of Voldemort, himself? What happens, in the dark, when you Play With Fire?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Helter Skelter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hermione tells us all about the way things really were during the Second Wizarding war, and about the way things really were, between her and Severus Snape.

 

** Chapter One: Helter Skelter **

            Mean, moody and magnificent.

            Dark, cruel, tortured, mysterious.

            This man haunts women’s dreams, they say.

            And I know what other people saw when they looked at the Potions Master, but from the time I was 10 years old, I saw a combination of Lord Byron, Bon Scott, and Merlin, all rolled into one.

            Maybe it was because I was born in a house in Vauxhall, Liverpool that, when you are standing in the window on the second floor of it, you can see the roof of the house where Snape grew up, at Spinner’s End.

            Maybe I’m just used to thinking a man is a yob and a villain and if he isn’t, then what kind of man is he?

            After all you can take the Scouser out of Vauxhall and move her to Woolton, but she’s not going to be any less who she is.

            Or maybe I read too many gothic novels, and too many of the dirty books in the box I found in our attic, and maybe I spent too many years in my teens reading D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller and brooding about sex until it became an obsession.

            But whatever the reason, my heart or my shoes, I got hooked on the Snape like a drunk hooked on booze.

            He was my magnificent obsession, and I did terrible things to further it.

            While my fellow students played Quidditch and talked about pop stars, or something, I pored over ancient forbidden grimores in Snape’s library, when I was supposed to be cleaning cauldrons and labeling bottles.

            I took up a concentration in Potions when I was 12.

            I got a job at his Mum’s shop, Prince’s Potions when I was 14, about to go on 15, just to be closer to him.

            That’s around the time I started having these weird sex dreams, like something out of William Burroughs, long, frightening, orgasmic stream-of consciousness affairs that I’d wake from with the sheets as soaked with sweat and otherwise as if I’d pissed them, feeling breathless and terrified and yet satisfied.

            And Mistress Rowling did not include in her Magnum Opioids the factoid that I lost my virginity to Viktor Krum about two weeks before the Yule Ball, or that me and my Russian raging bull remained friends and lovers throughout the war years and beyond.

            No, she stuck me with Ron, who is like my brother.

            I could never do it to Ron.

            And not to say anything about Viktor as a man, but no man was Severus Snape, my magnificent obsession, the dark master of those terrible, wonderful dreams in which all the men I had in them eventually wore his face by the end of them.

            My erotomania for Snape was the most pure, perfect and beautiful thing in the Helter Skelter life that Ron and Harry and I had, somewhere between P.G. Wodehouse and the aforementioned Burroughs, growing up at Hogwarts during the Second Wizarding War.

            It inspired me to do horrible things, but I always knew that if Snape ever caught me at any of them, he wouldn’t mind.

            Not from me, at least.

            Often, I’d sneak into his bedroom when he wasn’t there, and roll around on his sheets, soaking the smell of him into my nose.

            Many times I brushed my teeth with his toothbrush, and took a bath in his tub, and stole a dirty pair of his grubby grey y-fronts from his washing.

            And I didn’t stop there.

            I hid myself, on several occasions, in the tiny space between the astronomy tower’s ceiling and the peaked roof, staring through a tiny knothole, to watch him and his longtime friend with benefits, Professor Trelawney, go at it.

            She wasn’t ugly, without her clothes and her goo-goo eyes glasses.

            Not that I’m interested.

            I just thought I’d tell you.

            And Snape was so magnificent, when he was naked, he reminded you of a coarse-haired goatish satyr, wiry and rawboned and hairy and strong, so lusty and wicked and rampant and hung like a satyr, too.

            A lot of people find something sweet in this thing of theirs, and Professor Trelawney really is an old-time, unreconstructed Earth Mother hippie, but then again so is Squeaky Fromme.

            That’s what I see, Severus Snape, the Manson of Magic, and his last, best freaky-deaky witch, who has kept the home fires burning for him for a loooooooong time.

            But the worst thing was, over the years, I really did come to know Snape, as a Master and as a man.

            He trusted me, because I was faithful, and we shared a common respect and lust for power, mystery and magical knowledge.

            For my 14th birthday, when I became his Acoylte in Magick of the Alchemies, Snape gave me a mithril cauldron, made by Dwarves in the age of the returned king.

On my 15th, I got a copy of the Necronimicon, written by hand and bound in the skin of a dragon.

            On my 16th birthday, when I attained the age of consent, some unknown man with coarse stubble like sandpaper on his long pointed chin lay in wait for me in the library, and dragged me away from a dark corner into a darker one, so that we might pay each other a little lip service.

            On my 17th birthday, which occurred at the beginning of sixth year, a shadow darker than the long shadows of night kidnapped me from my bed and carried me through several layers of darkness into a Room of Requirement that was as inky dinky black as midnight in the mines of Moria, stripped me and himself of every stitch of my clothing and gave me the kind of dark shamanic fucking that had haunted my dreams since I was about 13 years old.

            I have to say, I wasn’t too bad, myself, either.

            The last thing he said to me, planting a kiss on my neck as I fell into a sweet stuporous sleep.

            “I own you now, my Acolyte. You belong to me, body and soul.”

            I was back in my bedroom when I woke up, and I might have thought it was all a dream if when I lifted my hair off my neck to check for hickies in the bathroom mirror I didn’t discover that he had marked me, alright.

            For life.

            Right under my ear was a highly-stylized ouroborous, that is, the snake devouring its own tail, in black and green.

            But it wasn’t a needle that made that tattoo on my flesh, it was the kind of old-time magic that no one wanted to allude to in a civilized place like Hogwarts.

            I knew it was Snape, both times, because I know his voice, the sound of his footsteps, the way he smells, like chalk and unfiltered English Ovals and ripe randy goat-hide.

            After that happened, there was no question of our relationship, Snape’s and mine, remaining chaste.

            Or , I should say, preserving the illusion of chastity, considering that I had been creepy-crawling Snape since I was 13, and that for the past year or so he’d been returning all of my bad behavior and then some; when he stole my panties he’d leave them on my pillow, all white and stiff with come, like dirty little Valentines.

            He spent Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays with Sibyl Trelawney, and the magickal cabal he had founded, which doesn’t technically exist, the Order of the Satyr, met on Sundays.

            The other three days of the week were mine, all mine.

            Of course, by this time, my sixth year, it went without saying that we all thought the end was near, so there was no time to waste, squeezing  what you wanted out of life before the end of it.

            But that’s no excuse, is it?

            For either of us.

            He knew me too well.

            I knew him too well.

            When I was 15, he drafted me into the War, of which he was the Diabolical Spymaster.

            I was James Bond to his M; Snape barked and I bit.

            Or maybe I was Sadie Mae Glutz to his diabolical Manson act.

            Life freaky, die freaky.

            Whichever, I did some terrible things for the good of the Wizarding World, but I also did them for Severus Snape.

            Mistress Rowling’s books that you love so well only hinted at the dark nature, at the horrors of the 2nd Wizarding War.

            She never spoke of magick as anything more than a collection of words, and it’s just as well, because Crowley himself would have balked at some of the rituals Harry went through, to win against Tom Riddle.

            And oh, lo, the magicks I did, they would have horrified the Great Beast, himself.

            There was blood involved, and a lot of it, and I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.

            Unmask, and the Red Death holds sway over all.

            Helter Skelter is coming down.

            But I was Snape’s Acolyte, and he was my master.

            Where he went, I would follow, what he did, I had done, and what he commanded, I enacted.

            I’m not saying I was just following orders.

            Snape was my Master, I was his Acolyte, I believed that what he was doing, what we were doing was right.

            Just.

            Even fun.

            Sometimes.

            In that last year of the war, with Albus secretly directing our efforts from under cover of death, and Ron and Harry and I always in the field, and Double Agent Snape in the Headmaster’s office, the Red Death did seem to hold sway over us all.

            It was our fabled 7th year, and I was 18 years old.

            Risking my own neck against death of both sides, I reported to the Headmaster in his dungeon, once a week.

            And received my marching orders.

            Death pressed on us both from all sides, and we were deep in our sins and our spells and our double-crosses; all days were black and desperate.

            It seemed like the end of all things, and we did not think on tomorrow, because today we were dirty, tomorrow we would just be dirt.

            Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, die you will, and die you must.

            It is both a terrible and wonderful thing, sometimes, getting what you want.

            Trust me, I would know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, we talk about Irma Grese, the Heart of Darkness, and the true nature of Family.


	2. Unmask! Unmask! Unmask!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn a little about Snape's upbringing, and the tendency of Northerners to stick together. Also. in which we all discover together that nihilism and ultraviolence, even when practised for a good cause, can have bad consequences.

 

** Chapter Two: Unmask! Unmask! Unmask! **

Time.

Time was something that Severus Snape found himself without.

"Sometimes, Da, I think Mum had it right. When she ran like hell from Tom Riddle, and aborted his demon spawn, and met you."

Tobias Snape took a sip of his tonic water and lime.

He and his wife and son were all sober, had been since 1980, but they still liked to go round to the pub.

"I may be faulted, for being a drunk and a pirate, but I looked after your Mum. I took care of my Ellie. All those years she was on the needle, and you, lad, I 'ad to give up the sea an go on the dole, till you went to school, because she'd leave you dirty and hungry. But she were only 17, when you were born. I may have been handy with me fists, on a toot. But I taught you to be a hard man, and it's kept you alive. I looked after you, too, when you went the way your Mum did. You've given that lot all your life, Sev. Do what your Mum done. Take the girl and go."

Time.

Time to wait until they were both a little older.

But Tobias Snape was 35 when he married Eileen Prince, who was 17, and she had been 15, when he met her.

Time.

In the war, in life, in the Headmaster's office, he had little left.

It didn’t bother Snape that he was nineteen years older than Granger, or that he was her professor; he didn’t suffer from the same kind of petty hypocritical morality that most punters did.

He certainly hadn’t learned it in the home of that old pirate Toby Snape, or from his mother Eileen Prince, the most brilliant witch in her year.

Eileen's black, black heart belonged to her husband, Tobias Snape, a fearsome, two-fisted Ginger Scotsman, a sailor in the worst traditions of villainy and piracy.

She married him when she was 16 and he was 35; while Eileen was on the run from the Wizarding World in general and  her former teacher/lover Tom Riddle.

They had met while Eileen was doing fortune telling in a broken-down caravan for an itinerant carnival of motley con artists and thieves.

It was love at first sight.

They met at a wretched hive of scum and villainy in a part of Glasgow so seedy as to be unmentionable. Toby was hiding from the police, who wanted him for some enquiries concerning a very large amount of unrefined, hospital-grade morphine that had disappeared from a ship he'd had a berth on.

 Eileen was in the process of making illegal uses of her magic powers to score, dredge up some customers to fleece for the carny and get a little action.

In the midst of a bar fight, Eileen hexed a man who was about to smash a bottle over Toby's head from behind his back.

They had quite a few drinks, together, a brief business discussion, followed by a lengthy personal one, and they cemented the bond of their eternal love in an enchanted encounter around the back of the pub amongst some dustbins.

Eileen engaged Toby to drive her caravan for her, and they used the carnival to sell about 3/4 of the morphine, the rest of which Eileen reserved for her own personal use.

Following which, Toby held up the avaricious old sinner who ran the crooked carny, at point of a rather frightening-looking rapier he had nicked from the sword-swallower, who owed them some twenty quid for dope.

After they relieved the fellow of the princely sum of one thousand quid, and liberated the keys to his vehicle, a 1954 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, Eileen obliviated everyone at the carnival of the time they had known her and Toby, and they set off for home.

They were married a few hours later, at the local registry in Glasgow, and made very quickly for Liverpool, as neither Toby nor Eileen, both Liverpudlians, wished their son to be born or raised elsewhere.

The new family were assigned to the house at Spinner's End that Toby Snape and his parents had lived in, until Toby's father, an drunken n'er do well who's temperament was not improved by battle fatigue killed his wife with the service revolver Her Majesty's Royal Marine Corps had unwisely let him keep after the first World War, and then turned the pistol on himself.

Through the years, it became clear that Toby and Eileen couldn't see to live with each other, nor could they live without one another. They were as notorious for their fights as they were for the enthusiastic way in which they made up.

Somehow, in the midst of it, they raised up their son, an unpleasant lad saddled with the unpleasant name of Severus Snape.

And being smart enough to go off to some fancy boarding school when he was just a boy didn't stop Sev Snape from living up to his full potential.

He was the terror of Vauxhall as a teenager, having his mother's intelligence and his father's brutality.

A wiry, thin, whipcord-taut heavily tattooed yob of a drunken junkie in long greasy hair and a greasy goatee, enforcing the iron will of some heavy or the other, selling every kind of dope you could think of, paying you in your own blood if you couldn't pay him; raising six kinds of hell day in and day out.

His neighbours weren't too surprised that when he grew to be a man he sobered up, settled his act down and became a professor at that school he went to, but without really ever surrendering his reputation as a real villain of a Scouser hard nut.

Men like Sev Snape were too tough and too smart to die from the excesses of their misspent youth; as there would be no leaving a good-looking corpse for the likes of them at any age, they'd live long lives, ossifying into tough old men hard as diamonds who could reduce some punk chav to jelly with a withering look.

Petty middle-class morality was as foreign to a man like Severus Snape as what passed for air on fucking Mars.

When he wanted something, he got it in the reach of his hand, and took it, especially if it was being offered to him.

Snape knew well enough to stay out of the way of the law; he always had, and it wasn’t just because Tom Riddle was his Master as well as Albus Dumbledore.

He was a clever man, a cagey fellow; the sort who didn’t leap before he looked.

And even though Granger was his Acolyte and he was her Master, meaning that she pretty much belonged to him, body and soul, lock, stock and smoking barrel, he was going to wait until she was 16.

When she was 16, the Muggle laws they, as Half-Bloods were both subject to, decreed Granger to be of the age of consent.

Snape was as patient as a coiled cobra; he could wait.

Granger couldn’t, she had already consented to Viktor Creed, but like his father before him, Snape considered a woman who was a libertine to be highly erotic.

Better, Granger was something of a degenerate.

At the tender age of 15, when most girls were supplementing the fumbling caresses of pimply young louts with posters of pop stars on their walls and trading notebooks full of tepid fantasies about fictional crushes, Granger was brushing her teeth with his toothbrush, rolling around in his bed, bathing in his tub and stealing his underwear.

His dirty underwear.

Over the next two years, Granger grew bolder.

Not only did he see her, spying on him while he was in bed with Sibyl, she made a point of looking him dead in the eye.

She left jasmine soap bubbles in the drain, strands of curly auburn-brown hair in his comb, and he found a pair of her multicolored cotton panties under his pillow.

They were exceedingly dirty.

He returned them, later, leaving them under her pillow, after making his own contribution.

Suddenly, she wasn’t just bending over the lab table too far, with one knee sock down and one up, her hair in long, sloppy uneven pigtails because she was lost in her work.

She was doing it on purpose, with an arch in her back, and a little sway in the arse some of these pimply boys mocked her for, because they weren’t yet man enough to be the master of an arse like that.

But Snape knew that he was.

All fucking day.

And now?

Their time had just begun, and already, it was running out.

He wanted to say something to her, about time, but she was 18, and a soldier.

In his war.

What the fuck could he say to Granger, about time, that would matter, at all?

* * *

 

Granger looked at him, across his desk, in his dungeon.

"You know my Da, he's a real World War Two fanatic. Probably because he grew up during it. His parents died in the Blitz, and his older brother got shot down over Germany, and my grandparents raised him and Uncle Colin. He still hates Nazis. I always thought of us as the Allies and the enemy as the Nazis. But I found this book, in the woods. About Nazi atrocities. Do you know who Irma Grese is?"

"Yes."

Snape was noncommittal.

But why the fuck were they talking about Irma Grese and Nazis?

Hermione lit another cigarette on the butt end of the one she was smoking.

She waved it, airily around her head.

Her face was impassive.

"Before she was assigned to Auschwitz, she was a fucking dairy maid, with fucking Swiss Miss braids in her hair. Six months later she was a dirty movie Nazi bitch queen, in big boots and an SS uniform, with a whip and a pistol and an attack dog. She drank the Kool Aid. Joined the circus. She believed the inmates were something less than human. And took great pleasure in watching them die. In making them die. Torture. Murder. Why not? They were _untermenchen_. Subhumans. A cancer in the body of mankind. It all began to sound familiar. And I looked at the clothes I had on. I was even wearing a military shirt and boots. I always do, now. That's when I realised that we are as much the Nazis as the enemy are. And you know who I am? I'm Irma Grese."

She laughed, wildly, a mad look on her face.

"I'm Irma fucking Grese. I am, Snape. I really fucking well am."

This did not bode well for anyone.

Snape lit an English Oval, and sucked the smoke deeply into his lungs.

"Well, Granger, if you want to get historical, I'd say you were Charlotte Corday. You're an assassin, if anything, Granger. Not a sadistic sex maniac." Snape replied.

"And you, you're fucking Robespierre! Off with their heads! All their heads!"

Hermione lit another cigarette.

And she laughed, again, more wildly than she did the first time.

She leaned over the desk and spoke to Headmaster Snape in a fast, rasping whisper, like she was telling him something secret and important, and hadn't much time to do it.

“What you are is the Manson of Magic, Snape. Except he never got to step into the highest corridors of power. You and the Witches and Wizards of the Order of the Satyr, you were all like some kind of Magical Manson Family, and now you’re running the Great and Secret Show. You, the Great Beast, from your throne made of the bones of your enemies. Your great-grandfather was a satyr, and your Master, Tom Riddle is a son of Lucifer, himself. I’ll bet you’re under a glamour, just so no one can see your Dark Satanic Horns as you sit in final judgment. But you never could get the Three Witches of the Satyr to do your diabolical bidding, because all of them, even Narcissa Black, they didn’t have murder in their hearts. But I do, don't I? I've just got a black little heart full of murder! A regular Heart of fucking Darkness. You see,  Snape, you go up the river, you kill Colonel Kurtz, and then you become him. And wait for somebody to come up the river and kill you. The spirit of Blood and Iron, it passes down the years, that way. From soul to soul.  I’m your assassin, your left arm, your Whore of Babylon. The brightest witch in my year, maybe even of my generation, and I’m the Sadie Mae Glutz to your Magical Manson. And from Albus Dumbledore’s chair, with your long, long, long memory, you bring the Nazi whip, Madame Guillotine, and Helter Skelter down on the heads of your enemies.  To quote the poet,  you and the boot in the face. Brute heart of a brute like you. You’ll walk over Albus Dumbledore and Tom Riddle’s bones to become the Last Man Standing, the Colossus Astride the World, washed into the corridors of power on a tidal wave of blood. Tom Riddle’s father isn’t the Devil, you are, Snape! You're the bloody red Devil, horns and hooves and all, with a great big cock to screw all the witches into line with!  You’re the Devil in human hobnail boots!”

Hermione rose to her feet as her tirade degenerated into an incoherent rant, shrieking her accusations at Snape.

Finally, at a loss for words, she threw herself across the desk and into his lap, and, laughing like a madwoman, she put her hands around his throat and squeezed, digging her fingernails into the flesh of his long, sinewy neck, at the same time as she laid a desperate, tortured kiss on his mouth.

Then, she hid her face in his shoulder and cried.

Snape was entirely dumbfounded, but he maininated his sangfroid.

He comforted her.

“You may be right, Granger. About everything you just said. No matter how insane it sounded. But, war, my acolyte, is a fine excuse for revenge. And you and I, we have so many, on both sides, to be revenged upon. If we have to be the executioners, and stand up to our waists in blood so that a society that has wished us dead from the moment of our births can go on without us, heaping praise on dullards and idiots and fortunate fucking sons, who can begrudge us if we try to settle up, in the process? These Death Eaters and their terrified turncoat accomplices, they are about as human as orcs and goblins. Only through this war would people like us have out grubby fingers on the fateful button. There is no fault in our stars, Granger.  Only that they are dark ones. This is the work we were meant for. These are the deaths our enemies richly deserve. We are not murderers, we are patriots. Heroes. Laugh, Granger. Don’t cry. Because the joke is finally on them and not us.  We’ll kill them all, you and I.  They serve the son of Lucifer? Good. We’ll send them to his father, and if they don’t have the courage of their convictions, fuck’m. Fuck’m all.”

Snape had thought those thoughts many times.

But he had never said them to anyone.

Hermione lifted her head from his robes.

Her eyes were shining and not just with her tears.

Snape felt powerful and uncomfortable, all at once.

“I agree with you, completely, Snape. I do. I never had the brass bollocks to say what you’ve just said, but I’ve thought it. Almost every day of my life. Does that make us wicked?” Hermione asked.

“Our foes are murderous neo-Nazi sorcerers in league with the mad demonic offspring of Satan, himself, who secretly plan to overthrow  the very universe, and make Tom Riddle as the master of a terrifying dimension of gods and monsters the like that Lovecraft barely hinted at. They are Hell-bent on the utter destruction of all possible life on all possible Earths. Perhaps all possible life in all possible universes, beyond the lives of huge, ancient, hideous monstrosities of blind, idiot, crawling chaos. Maybe we are wicked. Probably we are.  Our wickedness seems a bit fookin’ spare, next to theirs.”

Snape gave his diabolical chuckle, and bounced Hermione on his knee, a little.

She still looked sad, lost and mournful.

“What’s put your nose so far out’r joint, our Hermione? It's not like you to have moments of madness. Is it Wesley? Is he trying to instill conscience into you , and Potter? Feckin naff little git! I will have to put a stop to that shite, immediately! ” Snape decided..

Granger bravely sucked back a large sob.

“My Da has found out about some of the things we’ve done. He says I’m no better than Irma Grese, that we’re as bad as the Nazis, no matter how bad our enemies our, we have no right to exterminate them, wholesale. He threw me out. He says he has no daughter, anymore.”

Hermione started to cry, in big gulping sobs.

As well she should, only 17 and all alone in the world.

Snape held her, unashamedly, close against his chest, and stroked her wild, matted curls.

“May all the gods save us from the sanctimony of the righteous. Who can only tread the upward feckin' path because people like you and i have built it out of our filth and villainy. Don’t cry, our Hermione. I wouldn’t leave you to twist in the wind, would I? You still have me. And my people. I’ll look after you. And we’ll be your people, now.” He promised.

"Do you promise me, Snape? Do you?"

_Gods, did my mother say those words to my father, when she was about Granger's age and i was about his?_

_I'll bet she did._

"Of course I promise you, Granger. You're my Acolyte. Body and soul. And my woman. You're home with me. Home and safe."

                                                                        ***

Toby Snape scowled, and shook his leonine red head.

“I don’t know, John. Yer and yer fookin’ Nazis. That was fifty, sixty years ago, and they’re all dead and buried. It’s no reason to turn your own daughter out.”

Dr. John Granger loaded the last of Hermione’s things into the lorry that Toby Snape had hired.

“Toby, I’ve known you all your life, and most of mine. So don’t take this wrong, but what would an old pirate like you know about the principle of things?”

Toby laughed at that.

“Not much. But I’ll tell you wot my principles are. I do right, by me and mine, and no matter what anyone else has to say, no matter wot they done, I stand behind them. She’s your daughter, John. You can twist it how yer like, but there’s no way what you’re doin’ is right. When that sinks in, she’ll be at my boy Sev’s place, on Spinner’s End, or with me and Ellie and her people in West Darby.”

“It’s not just that, Toby. Your Sev, he’s, well, he’s a grown man, and a hard man, too. Born to it, he was, with your for a father, me old friend. She’s only 18. A little schoolgirl. And she’s his assassin. He’s had her killing for him, whoever he says for her to kill, since she was 15 years old!”

“It’s a war, John! A feckin' war! That Moldyshorts, or whatever the fuck, he’ll kill us all! Not just the magical folk, all us Muggles, too! He'll make Hitler look like a punter. And it’s not as if Sev doesn’t get his own hands dirty. He’s in it up to his neck, on both sides. It’s war, John, and these people are the enemy. They’re fookin’ well in league with the actual bloody son of Satan, himself!”

“But they are people, Toby. You can’t just exterminate them all!”

“They do things, John. Sex things. The sickest you can imagine, Sev says. He won't tell me what. but I know he used to drink and shoot up to forget them.  For their wicked master. With him, too, and demons and monsters and so on. I’m not sure they are human, anymore. Not completely.  You know. Like in the horror flicks. In those H.P Lovecraft books you gave me to keep meself awake at sea on watch. ”

John thought about _The Shadow Over Innsmouth_ , or worse, _The Dunwich Horror_.

The half-face of goatish Wilber Whately’s unspeakable demon brother.

The things that crawled out of the black depths of the cold New Emgland waters, to meet the things that came down from the beaches of Innsmouth.

Journeys end in lovers meeting.

Dr. Gnager shuddered

“I don’t know, Toby. I just don’t.”

“Well, I hope you can suss it out. When you do, you know where your girl will be. Don't worry about her. If all that magical shite goes knees up? You wouldn't believe the arsenal me and Sev have socked away. Got it from me Russian friends, mostly. Both me and the boy, we sleep with a fucking Kalashnikov behind the bed. Nothing stops a barrage of hot lead from a Soviet-made AK-47. There's not a feckin' spell for that!" 

"No, Toby. I suppose there isn't."

Toby Snape shook hands with John, to show him there was no ill will.

He got in the lorry, shut the door and laid his Kalashnikov across his knees, covering it with his kilt. and then drove away, shaking his head.

“Poor John. Poor bastard and his fuckin’ principles. Thank God I am an old pirate, if that’s what it is to be a decent, honest man!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next we meet the members of The Grand and Exalted Order of the Satyr, a secret cabal practicing High Ceremonial Sex Magick, and the fun, and the mayhem, really begins. Just wait until you see who the members are!


	3. The Grand and Exalted Order of the Satyr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we go forward to the end of the war, to meet the mysterious Robin Veritas, the Thief of Truth who explains to us the identity of the men and women behind the curtain that we have been bade to pay no attention to.

**Chapter Three: The Grand and Exalted Order of the Satyr**

 

**Article From "The Quibbler" First Anniversary of the End of the 2nd Wizarding War Issue**

 

KEEPERS OF THE FLAME OF ALBION:

A HISTORY OF THE GRAND AND EXALTED ORDER OF THE SATYR

By Robin Veritas

            The Grand and Exalted Order of the Satyr is the most powerful force in Wizarding Britain, today, if not in the whole of the Wizarding World.

            Also, it does not exist.

            The Order was founded in the mid-1970’s by a gifted and troubled group of students at  Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in Scotland. The three men and three women were all Acolytes studying under different Masters or Mistresses of the Five Disciplines, including the only three existing Pendragons, i.e. Masters in the 3rd and Highest Degree of all the Five Disciplines in Britain.

            Students of Cassandra Trelawney, Albus Dumbledore and Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort.

            Historically, the Order must be viewed in the context of the Occult Revival of the 1960’s and 1970’s in the Wizarding World.

            After World War I, a conflict so pervasive that it included Wizards, and Witches as well as Muggles, the Magical Materialism movement, which had been a minor movement that began in Britain and the United States during the Industrial Revolution, became the premier philosophy of the Wizarding World.

            Magical Materialism rejected High Ceremonial Magick, altogether, and encouraged modern wizards in the Industrial Era to abandon the Occult and Mystical roots of magic.

            According to Magical Materialism, the ability of witches and wizards to perform magic is innate and genetic, no more mystical than an inherited trait to have blue eyes or black hair. 

            Traumatized by the Horrors of war, most of the industrialized Western Democracies, Constitutional Monarchies and Republics of Europe and North and South American broke, at least officially with centuries of tradition and embraced the new school of thought.

            Dissent, however, began almost immediately.

            Witches and Wizards of note such as Cassnadra Trelawney, Aphrodite Lovegood. Severus Prince, Albus Dumbledore, Pollux Black, Abraxas Malfoy, Gellert Grindelwald and Tom Riddle were all opponents of Magical Materilaism.

            To quote  Albus Dumbledore, in an essay he wrote in 1920, entitled _Extinguishing the Flame of Albion,_ “To divorce the theory and practice of physical magic from its ceremonial, mystical and occult roots is to rip the soul from the Wizarding body politic. If physical magic is nothing but a quirk of nature, a series of mere parlor tricks devoid of any deeper purpose and meaning, then it remains a short step to pooh-pooh the difference between Black Magick and White Magick, concepts that are rooted in the ceremonial, mystical and occult. If there is no Good and Evil in Magick, only the ability of the witch or wizard to perform spells, charms and hexes, then Pandora’s Box is at last opened, and Hope too escapes from the world.”

            By the 1960’s and 1970’s, the dissident movement had grown from a vocal minority to a large and powerful movement within the Wizarding World.

            The Order, founded by six Acolytes of the ancient Five Disciplines, has its’ framework in this struggle, a moral and political schism which was the backdrop of the First Wizarding War.

            At its start, the Order was not much of a representative for the grandeur of the Old Ways.

            It was a simple Dionysian mystery cult, celebrating the traditional hedonistic pleasures of the Witches Sabbats so reviled by Magical Materialism.

            Sex, booze, dope, ancient mystical ritual, and cheap thrills.

            With a little rock and roll thrown in for modernity’s sake.

            However, as the years passed, and its adherents evolved into some of the most powerful witches and wizards in the world, the Order went on to acquire many of the features of a true Cabal.

            While never losing its outlaw flavor as a hedonistic mystery cult, of course.

            Its meetings were conducted in secrecy at a certain location, it had its own rituals of High Ceremonial Magick, the Order was rooted in the Occult and Mystical philosophies of time immemorial and was made up of powerful and influential Wizards, who all denied, and still deny, its very existence.

            They may have seemed an unlikely motley crew of misfits and mavericks in the 1970’s, but each member had quite an impressive pedigree, and rose quickly to great heights of Power and Mastery, in Occult circles and in the Wizarding World.

            The cult’s founder, Severus Tobias Snape, is currently the Headmaster of Hogwarts, famous as the greatest living hero of the Wizarding war, next to Harry Potter, himself.

            He is the grandson of a Pendragon, Severus Prince, who is the son of Vernus Prince, otherwise known as Vernus the Satyr, a son of the Great God Pan, and Master of the Satyrs of the Forbidden Forest.

            Severus Sr’s. wife, Aphrodite Lovegood, is the daughter of a Veela, and was the Grand High Priestess of the Church of British Druidism for twenty years.

            Lord Lucius Malfoy, technically, upon the death of his father, Abraxas, became King Lucius IV of Avalon and Numenour, High King of the Elves, High King of the Witches and Wizards of Albion.

            Lord Malfoy, who was a Minister for Magic for twenty years is a Pendragon and a Doctor of Magical Law. He is currently the Chief Prosecutor of the postwar Ministry of Magick.

            Like Snape, Malfoy is a former Death Eater who turned on his master,  becoming a double agent and contributing greatly to the ultimate downfall and Demise of Lord Voldemort.

            The third male member of the Order is Remus Lupin, a Centurion in the Knights of Albion, and the Alpha Werewolf of the Forbidden Forest. Currently the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts, the recently widowed Remus Lupin is also one of the Wizarding World’s leading philosophers, and, you guessed it, a Pendragon.

            The Three Witches of the Satyr are no less accomplished than the men.

            Sibyl Trelawney, granddaughter of famous seer Cassandra Trelawney, has the least  amount of human blood of any of the six members. Her mother was a full Veela, and her father is the son of Cassandra Trelawney and her half-veela husband, Oliver Trelawney.

            Sibyl is the Professor of Divination at Hogwarts, and the seer who foretold the rise of Harry Potter and the fall  of Lord Voldemort. She is not a Pendragon, but is the first Avatar of any of the Five Disciplines, a degree higher than the 3rd Degree only conferred upon a witch or Wizard by a god or demi-god, in the last 500 years.

            Professor Trelawney, once considered the most beautiful woman in Wizarding Britain, was made an Avatar of the Magick of Love and Eros, commonly and crudely known as Sex Magick, by the goddess Aphrodite of Olympus,  Freyja of Asgard, Goddess of Love and Fertility, and the Great God Pan, to whom the Order of the Satyr is consecrated.

            Rumor has it that after the imprisonment of her one true love, Sirius Black, Professor Trelawney made a pact with her patron goddesses to sacrifice her great beauty and her veela powers for the life of close-friend and Order founder Severus Snape, after finding him dead in his quarters, a suicide following the death of Lily Evans Potter.

            The pact allows her only to retain her true beauty between the hours of Midnight and dawn, and when she is in the physical presence of Severus Snape, or at the meetings of the Order.

            Lady Narcissa Malfoy is the only female Pendragon in the Wizarding World, today.  Like her husband, she is primarily of Elvish decent, through the line of Queen Galadriel. She is the current Lady of Lorien, supposedly with all the power and priveleges therof.  Narcissa Malfoy is a Parselmouth and an Animagus, whose animal form is a Python. She has the mystical power of Calling, in which she can use Parselmouth to summon and direct the behavior of all reptilian and amphibian creatures.

            Arabella Baxter, is a demi-goddess, daughter of Aprhrodite of Olympus and the Muggle-born Wizard Oliver Baxter, a large, ginger Irishman and Quidditch Hero who, at 60 is the oldest member of Great Britain’s National Quidditch Team, and has been the Captain of the Dublin Dragons since he was 19 years old.

            Arabella was the Mata Hari of both Wizarding Wars. Hers was the face that sank a thousand Death Eaters, and it is reported that she is the Mistress instructing Harry Potter, already a master of Two of the Five Discplines, as an Acoltlye in the Magick of Love and Eros.

            Ms. Baxter is a demi-goddess, as such she does not have a job; her position is to be a demi-goddess.

            Since the end of the Wizarding Wars, with the advent of a Ministry of Magick that is in favor of the so-called Occult Revival Movement, the members of the Grand and Exalted Order of the Satyr, who occupy positions of prominence in the Wizarding World, are the shadow government of the new age into which we enter.

            With the fall of both Albus Dumbledore and Tom Marvolo Riddle, a great vacuum of power was created that can only be filled by witches or wizards of similar power, charisma, and Magikcal adeptness.

            The new Wizarding government, I predict,  will be a constitutional monarchy, set up by the upcoming Constitution of 1999, which will sweep away the authoritarian and fascistic elements of the Magical Materialism movement, and replace them with a government that is similar to the one enjoyed by British Muggles.

            This will include the revoking of the ban on the use of Muggle technology by Witches and Wizards, and will also probably include the rumored Pureblood Marriage Law.

            Those who read this may think that I am another conspiracy nut, but your author has the ear of both Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, whom the Order is rumored to be considering as it’s first new members from the Second Wizarding War generation.

            I have seen the future, my friends, and as history will show, it is very much like the past.

            So, everyone get out  your robes and your broomsticks and your magical ointments, and prepare to go to the nearest standing stones, not for the usual staid, boring, eviscerated rituals of the stodgy old C of D, the Church of British Driudism, but for an old-fashioned Witches Sabbat.

            War is over.

            The millennium is at hand.

            Time to party like it’s 999.


	4. Kindness of Strangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is dirty work done, and we see just what could have horrified the good Dr. John Horatio Granger into disowning his only daughter.

 

** Chapter Three: Kindness Of Strangers **

Cursing her lot in life, a dirty, tattered, torn and frayed Hermione fumbled in her backpack for dangerous Muggle contraband.

A package of baby wipes from Sainsbury's.

“Why did I fucking bother? Da said that Toby Snape told him, don’t send your girl to that school. Look what happened to Lily Evans. Look what happened to my Ellie. Well, Toby, look what happened to me! I could be at university right now. Oxford. Cambridge. I could be studying to be a professor. Or an engineer. Instead, I’m shitting in the bushes and wiping my arse with baby wipes, and I’ve not had a bath for weeks! Christ, almighty, now I know why Muggles burnt these people! I’d suck the Devil’s cock, for a hot bath, a hot meal, and a proper bed to sleep in!” Hermione fumed.

She put the baby wipes away, pulled up her jeans, and stood up.

There was a well-dressed man, standing a few metres away from her, with his back to her.

Speak of the Devil, and he appears, she thought, smiling wryly.

“What about your King, Granger? Would you serve me for some of the amenities you desire?”

Malfoy turned around.

Like Snape, he was a double agent, secretly working against Voldemort.

Hermione had always felt like a peasant, standing next to the heir of both Aragorn and Elrond.

Now, in all thsiu despaerate rustic disarray, she felt like a serf with an iron collar around her neck.

He raised an eyebrow, and smirked at her.

“What’s all this? Dressed in rags and squatting in the bushes? Is this camouflage?”

“No. It’s camping. Our tent hasn’t got a toilet, let alone a shower. And we have bunkbeds. The kitchen has a wood stove. Did Snape send you with provisions?”

“Where did you get a tent like that from?”

“The Ministry of Magic.”

“Bugger them! They’re just as bad as fucking Voldemort. When the war is over, things are going to change, in this country. What about those boys you’re living with?”

Hermione got the feeling Malfoy really wa slooking for something.

She was tempted to give it to him, too?

What the fuck, it was the end of the world; there was no point in forgoing an pleasure that was yours for the taking, was there?

“Ron and Hermione are like brother and sister. And the two of us are close friends.”

Harry came up out of the woods, and casually put his arm around Hermione's waist.

“Keeping it in the family, Granger?” Malfoy smirked.

“The Old Snape is my guardian, Malfoy. He was my mother’s best friend, that’s all. We’re not related. Did you come here for any good reason, or just to see if our Hermione was dirty, horny and desperate enough to fuck you up against a tree for a Thermos of hot soup?” Harry bristled.

“Your stepfather has sent me to see if you children need anything. Apparently you need everything. A decent tent. Baths. Hot meals. Clothes. Arthur! Back that contraption down the road.”

Harry and Hermione heard grinding gears.

“What’s that?”

“It’s an old VW caravan. Meant to look derelict and abandoned. You’ll find a proper command centre on the inside. And far more civilised accommodations. Arthur located it, and Snape kitted it out.” Malfoy explained

“I’d better drive it.” Harry grimaced

“You’re license is suspended, Harry. For your last fifty DWI ‘s.” Hermione reminded him.

“But, unlike Mr. Weasley, I know how to drive.”

                                                                        ***

Ron spun around in the leather captain’s chair at the main table in the command center portion of their new digs.

There was also a common room, a bathroom, a kitchen, and three individual little bedrooms.

Hermione was driving, and Harry was sitting beside her, as they headed down the highway, going to their new campsite in what appeared to be an ancient VW Vanagon camper.

“Do you think they’ll let you keep this, Harry? After the war?” Ron asked.

“I’m not fucking well giving it back.”  Harry protested.

He was working his way through a case of Merlin's lager, and paused in his drinking only to light a joint that would have astounded Bob Marley.

Hermione and Ron were not alarmed.

Harry’s substance problems had a Guitar Wizard’s magnitude; him smoking a spliff and drinking beer was sobriety, for him.

“Look sharp, Ron!” Harry yelled, and threw Ron a beer.

Hermione was a little angry with the way they were acting.

They were going to assassinate an enemy agent, not going to a fucking Rolling Stones concert.

Although, Hermione would rather be doing that, than going to kill someone.

The man had been living as Muggle for twenty years, and they were supposed to make it look like a robbery, or a drug deal gone wrong.

No magic.

Ordinary Muggle murder.

Disordered, random and bloody.

“Life is nasty, brutish and short.” Hermione mused.

“So are you.” Harry joked.

Harry pulled the caravan up to the kerb.

“Take her back to the camp, Ron. We’ll be back, tonight.”

Unlike Harry and Hermione, Ron had no stomach for killing.

Especially not this way.

Dressed all in black, with black gloves on, Hermione and Harry waited for the van to be gone.

Harry carried the black duffel around the back of the house.

A dumpy little hovel, in s shitty little neighborhood.

It could have been Vauxhall, or Spinner's End.

He tried the back door.

It was open.

Harry handed Hermione the bag, and they both put on their tactical belts, which contained the standard pistol and knife, and an added holster for their wands.

They were meant to kill the Death Eater sympathizer with knives, boots and fists.

Hermione could hear his telly, as they came in through the kitchen.

He was watching _Doctor Who._

Hermione hoped it would be easy, but the man jumped out of his chair and went for his wand.

“Expelliarmus!” Hermione cried, as Harry went for the big man, tackling him.

Harry was tall, wiry, and rawboned, and stronger than he looked, and although he had looked like a grown man since he was about 15, he wasn’t a match for the big Death Eater.

The boy and the big man rolled about on the floor, punching and smacking and gouging at each other.

Hermione got her knife out, too.

Harry was sitting on the man’s chest, punching him in the face, and the man had his hand on harry’s wrist, trying to keep Harry’s knife back.

Hermione grabbed a bottle from the table by the telly, and smashed it upside the struggling man’s face.

Swearing, his nose dripping blood, Harry began slashing at the Death Eater with his knife as Hermione kicked him in the head.

“Die you fucking Death Eater bastard! Just give up and fucking die!” she howled.

Finally, the big man’s arms fell at his sides, and Hermione bent over and stabbed him in the neck, severing his jugular vein, as Harry stabbed him, up to the hilt of the knife, right in the heart.

He gurgled and jerked and his heels drummed against the floor.

Finally, he was still.

Panting with exertion, Harry and Hermione both sat back on their haunches.

“Fuck. He died hard, the bastard.” Harry panted.

Hermione rolled up the dead man’s sleeve, and used her wand to reveal and then destroy his Dark Mark.

“Avada fucking Kedavra.” She muttered.

“Helter Skelter, motherfucker. Come on. Lets toss the place.” Harry added.

Wiping his bloody nose on his black sleeve.

They made it look like a robbery, or a drug deal gone bad, actually stealing the man’s money, a cache of cigarettes, and an array of potions.

They went to his bathroom, undressed, and Hermione scourgified their clothes clean.

She and Harry took a long shower, made love under the slow, sputtering stream, and got dressed again, in regular Muggle clothes.

Hungry, they went into the dead man’s kitchen and raided his fridge.

They had a sandwich and took a bag of unopened crisps with them, and a carton of chocolate milk.

A large, mangy dog barked, pitifully from a pen in the back yard.

A bull terrier mix.

They located some dog food, let the dog out, and fed him.

“What a fucking twat! Look how he treats his poor familiar.” Harry commented.

They looked at his collar.

The dog’s name was Nicodemus.

Harry had killed a rat, in the house, and he turned it into a double for the dog and left it, dead in the pen.

The actual dog trotted after them, down the street.

He kept pushing his head under their hands, and wagging his tail.

“I guess we have a dog, now. He’s big, and fierece. I’ll bet you’ll come in handy, won’t you, Nicodemus?” Harry asked, patting the dog’s head.

He sat down on the ground and thumped his tail.

Hermione petted him, too.

They walked into town, and Harry went into the pet store, and bought flea bath, dog food, dog  dishes, a pet bed, some sturdy toys, and a nice collar and name-plate.

That was the end of the Death Eater's money.

They caught the Knight Bus, then they walked, with the dog, about a mile, to the campsite.

Once they got back, Ron and Harry gave the dog a flea bath, and Hermione made a place for Nicodemus, in the common room.

She went to bed, and Harry came to bed with her, and they made love, again.

They were half asleep when the dog jumped onto the bed with them, and curled up by their feet.

They both sat up to pet him.

Harry got up, and got another can of beer and drank it, and brought the dog bed in.

Nicodemus brought them his new toy, and they played with him, for awhile.

The dog took the toy back to his bed, to play with it, and Harry and Hermione lay back down.

“Can I sleep with you, tonight?” Harry asked her.

“I wish you would.” She told him.

They fell asleep.

 

***

Albus Dumbledore threw down the Muggle newspaper.

“It’s terrible, Severus.”

“Why? The police bought it. Drugs related robbery and murder. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“But cold-blooded murder. And you sent…”

Dumbledore's voice died off.

“My own stepson, who just might be me own son,  who I've raised from a boy of ten, and my acolyte, who might just be my mistress? Yes, i sent them. I trust them. I trained them. This is war, Albus. That bastard McNeil got what he deserved. For twenty years, he’s been getting the girls for Tom Riddle's rituals. And some for his own purposes. Read a little further in that article. To where it says that George McNeil, a local drug dealer, was also suspected in the deaths of ten Yorkshire women since the early eighties, but police didn’t have enough evidence to charge him.”

“I’m not concerned with the dead man so much as what will become of Harry and Hermione in the future. Do you ever think about that, Severus?”

Snape swore.

Horribly.

“In the future? Are you fucking mad, Albus? If we don’t win this war for good and all this time, they won’t have a future. No one will."

"He might very well be your son, Severus. Your only son, and your Acolyte. The girl you love."

"They have murder in their hearts, Albus. In a war like this, I need to use the most angry, the most damaged, the most victimised at Tom's hands. People like me. Weasley can't kill for me. His sister can't stop killing for me. Murder can't live in a human heart without shattering it, Albus. Someday, it leaps out. Let it leap out at those filthy Death Eaters. Until they are all consumed."

"All?"

Dumbledore looked horrified.

Snape whirled on him, his unattractive long, lantern-jawed face with its high forehead and beaky nose gone demonic with firece intensity.

"Yes, Albus. All of them. That was the mistake you made the first time. A mistake we will not make. They all have to die. Young and old, man and woman, down to their children, their familiars and the old demonic grannies in black crepe-draped wheelchairs. I don't ask my agents to do anything i have not done, or will not do, myself. Remember that."

Albus shook his head.

"What kind of a world will it be, then, Severus?"

"A world without Tom Riddle. Anything other than that? The abyss."


End file.
